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Want to arm wrestle?

By Dr. Davis | July 9, 2018

I have previously discussed (in my Undoctored Blog) how loss of muscle mass is a phenomenon of aging with up to 50% loss of muscle mass from age 25 to 75, especially bad if you yo-yo dieted over the years. We’ve all seen it: Aging involves reduced ability to climb stairs, hike, wrestle with a shovel, hoist heavy grocery bags, eventually leading to need for a cane, walker, wheelchair, or Boy Scout to assist you in crossing the street. Severe muscle loss, sarcopenia, is a close cousin of frailty.

Muscle mass has therefore been labeled a biomarker for biological age. We need a gauge of biological age because, unlike trees in which we count rings or measure antler wingspan in elk, we need a quantifiable measure in humans that we can track and manipulate.

In particular, inflammation—“inflammaging”—is proving to be a major factor that influences muscle mass: Any factor that increases your body’s inflammatory state adds to muscle loss and potentially accelerates associated phenomena of aging. Among the factors that influence inflammation:

Inflammation is therefore a major influence over muscle status, along with other factors such as testosterone, IGF-1 alpha provocation, and oxytocin. (That last item, oxytocin, by the way, is why consuming our L. reuteri yogurt is such a powerful practice: It boosts oxytocin release from the hypothalamus dramatically, yielding increased muscle, reduced visceral fat, accelerated healing, increased bone density, heightened libido, etc.)

Crucial question: If muscle mass is a biomarker for age, is it simply an accompaniment or is it causal? If an accompaniment, like age spots, then increasing muscle will not yield anti-aging benefits, just as removing age spots does not make you more youthful. If it is causal, then increasing muscle mass should yield age-reversing benefits. However, the jury is still out on whether increasing muscle is associated with age-reversing effects.

Regardless, increasing muscle is a good thing. It allows you to remain independent, less likely to fall and less likely to incur injury when you do fall, exerts metabolic advantages such as enhanced insulin sensitivity and protection from visceral fat accumulation, and improves bone density. My bet is that increasing muscle mass is not like age spots and does indeed backpedal on aging to some degree. In the meantime, by engaging in Undoctored practices, such as wheat/grain/sugar elimination, vitamin D restoration, omega-3 supplementation to mimic primitive eating habits, efforts to cultivate healthy bowel flora including L. reuteri seeding, combined with physical work and/or strength training, I believe that you have stacked the odds in favor of doing the tango at age 90 long after your peers have checked out for the great big breadbasket in the sky.

Comments & Feedback...

I started a low carb/keto lifestyle 18 months ago. I am 68. My numbers have improved significantly. However, my strength continues to decline due to continual injuries to many muscles and tendons through low level workouts at the gym. My cardiologist encouraged me to hire a personal trainer to help me build core strength and muscle strength as you write about in this article. These workouts, even done cautiously, created tears in 3 of my lumbar discs, tears in both of my biceps tendons and other shoulder tendons. I am in constant pain and looking less toned than ever. I am terribly depressed. I do not have the energy to start making your yogurt myself. I take all the supplements as well. I need help.

That doesn’t sound exactly like the present Wheat Belly (or Undoctored) program (which is very low net carb, and relies on ketosis as an optional and intermittent tool — with some hazards if used chronically). I only mention this because the whole program includes other aspects that might have some benefit in your case.

re: «…continual injuries to many muscles and tendons through low level workouts at the gym.»

That’s not a constellation of complaints familiar to me at all (or that has arisen in the program to my recollection), so I have no specific insight there.

re: «I do not have the energy to start making your yogurt myself.»

As the family fermenter, this yogurt takes a lot less work than many ordinary meal recipes. Can you get someone to help you set up a process and run the first couple of batches?

re: «I take all the supplements as well.»

What are they? And are you doing anything for collagen?
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Hi, If you are doing too intense a workout you will continue to injure yourself. Why not take the advice and find a good trainer or even better – a good physical therapist!! You may be working out in misdirected ways. There are very effective low impact workouts that build strength and will build your core. Muscles and tendons take many months to mend – if they can fully mend. If you have such tears you may need to suspend your workout and focus on healing first.

Also, low carb/keto is not the same as grainless eating in which you will carefully add back in healthy fats that help build muscle and shift you to a more sustaining diet. Please take the time to read Dr. Davis’s books. Too much keto can be depleting.

Keep in mind that wheat elimination (and incidental grain reduction) was something Dr. Davis was suggesting to his patients and blog followers several years prior to the publication of Wheat Belly (2011), and the focus then was strictly cardio. He would have been closely watching various inflammation markers, routinely CRP, in hundreds, perhaps thousands of patients, and probably not really expecting to see a specific inflammation response to wheatectomy, but got it anyway. On this, my presumption is that etiological hypothesis followed contemplation of unexpected outcomes (and some of the explanation had to await Fasano’s work).

As measured how, and in the context of what wider diet? On a standard diet, shifting the grain fraction from refined to “whole”, and thus more fiber, does indeed act like switching from unfiltered to filtered cigarettes — a modest reduction in the rate of castastrophe. The real fix, tho, is the same.

Maybe I didn’t make myself clear, but I typed “are you sure about that?” solely in response to the negative effects he states wheat has on bowel flora. And you say wheat bran and wheat dextrin and it is apparent that many people have problems with wheat specifically. Forgetting about wheat for that matter If we were to discuss some of the other gluten free grains, many of them turn up to have similar benefits with fiber and certain plant components that favorably affect the gut microbiome.

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